Layla

"Layla"
Missing image LaylaCover.jpg
Song by Derek and the Dominos
From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Recorded	Criteria Studios, Miami, August-September 1970
Genre	Rock music
Song Length	7 min 02 s
Record label	Atco Records
Producer	Tom Dowd
Derek and the Dominos chronology
- -	Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs 1970	Derek and the Dominos In Concert 1973

This article is about the song written by Eric Clapton. For the Saudi Arabian town of Layla, see Layla, Saudi Arabia

"Layla" is the title track on the Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, released in December of 1970. It is considered one of rock music's definitive love songsTemplate:Ref, featuring an unmistakable guitar figure, played by Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, as lead-in.

Contents

Background

In 1966, George Harrison married Pattie Boyd, a model he had met during the filming of A Hard Day's Night.

During the late 1960s, Clapton and Harrison, as two of the top English guitarists of the day, became fast friends. Clapton contributed guitar work on Harrison's White Album "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and Harrison sang on Cream's "Badge" from Goodbye.

However, trouble was brewing for Clapton. His supergroup Cream had angrily broken apart. His growing heroin addiction threatened his life. And, when Boyd came to Clapton for aid during marital troubles, Clapton fell desperately in love with her.

The title, "Layla", was inspired by a Persian love story, The Story of Layla/Layla and Majnun, by Nezami. When he wrote "Layla", Clapton had recently been given a copy by a friend, Ian Dallas, who was in the process of becoming a Muslim. Nezami's tale, about a moon-princess who was married off by her father to someone other than the man who was desperately in love with her, resulting in his madness (in Arabic, Majnoun means "madman"), struck a deep chord with Clapton.

"Layla" was the result - a powerful and moving statement of unrequited love for Boyd-Harrison, with an immediately recognisable guitar riff, always remaining a vivid memory for anyone who has heard it.

The influence of Clapton's affection for Boyd is obvious; compare the striking album cover by Frandsen-de Schonberg to the picture of Boyd at right.

Missing image
Boyd2.jpg

George Harrison with Pattie Boyd.

In 1977, Boyd divorced Harrison and, in 1979, married Clapton. The two later divorced in 1988, after struggles with Clapton's alcoholism and extramarital affairs.

Recording

After the breakup of Cream, Clapton tried his hand with several artists, including Blind Faith and a husband and wife duo, Delaney and Bonnie. However, in the spring of 1970, he was told that Delaney and Bonnie's backup band, consisting of bassist Carl Radle, drummer Jim Gordon, and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, was leaving the group.

Seizing the opportunity, Clapton formed a new group. Their original title, Eric and The Dynamos, was apparently mispronounced as Derek and the Dominos, a name which stuck.

In April of 1970, Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band joined Clapton's fledgling band as a guest. Clapton, having heard Allman's work on Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude" cover, and finding himself in the same area as Allman, was introduced at an Allman Brothers concert by Tom Dowd. The two hit it off well and soon became good friends.

Dowd was already famous for a variety of work (including Aretha Franklin's "Respect"), and had worked with Clapton in his Cream days (Clapton once called him "the ideal recording man"); however, his work on the album would be a crowning achievement. For the making of his biographical documentary The Language of Music, he remixed the original master tapes of "Layla", saying "There are all my principles, in one form or another."

With the band assembled and Dowd producing, "Layla" was recorded as it was then written. However, Clapton found Gordon playing a piano piece he had composed separately and convinced him it to let it be used with Clapton' song. "Layla" was complete.

Structure

"Layla" is centered around two musical themes. The first, a D minor guitar piece performed at several different octaves, composed of a quick series of hammer-ons and pull-offs, is considered the "signature riff". The second is played at various points on piano, acoustic guitar and slide guitar.

In essence, "Layla" is split into two segments. The first, after its emotional verses and pleading choruses, segues into the thickly overdubbed solo. As Clapton with "Brownie" (a Fender Stratocaster that later sold at auction for nearly half a million dollars) plays the gripping melody, Allman's incendiary slide work on a Gibson Les Paul channels Clapton's pain into music.

The second is Jim Gordon's piano coda. It is altogether a more sublime, peaceful segment, as both guitarists contribute quiet, lofty slide guitar in the background.

The contrast between the emotional beginning and mild ending is uncommon in rock music, and highly effective as a result; compare to other classics of the era, such as "Stairway to Heaven", which builds from a mild introduction to a hard-rock finale.

The lyrics are written in the second person. The speaker is talking (possibly in his mind) to the object of his affection. The second verse is usually the only verse with an agreed meaning; it describes Clapton's involvement with Boyd (i.e. "Tried to give you consolation/When your old man would let you down"). The other verses are somewhat more abstract, describing Clapton's general state of mind and hopes at the time.

As Clapton commented on his signature song, "'Layla' is a difficult one, because it's a difficult song to perform live. You have to have a good complement of musicians to get all of the ingredients going but, when you've got that… It's difficult to do as a quartet, for instance, because there are some parts you have to play and sing completely opposing lines, which is almost impossible to do. If you've got a big band, which I will have on the tour, then it will be easy to do something like 'Layla' – and I'm very proud of it. I love to hear it. It's almost like it's not me. It's like I'm listening to someone that I really like. Derek And The Dominos was a band I really liked – and it's almost like I wasn’t in that band. It's just a band that I'm a fan of. Sometimes, my own music can be like that. When it's served its purpose to being good music, I don't associate myself with it anymore. It's like someone else. It's easy to those songs then.”

Or, as his inspiration Pattie Boyd once said, "I think that he was amazingly raw at the time... He's such an incredible musician that he's able to put his emotions into music in such a way that the audience can feel it instinctively. It goes right through you."

Reception

The album opened to mixed critical reviews. Sales were lackluster (never even charting in Britain), as, with Clapton unmentioned except on the back, it appeared to be a double album from an unknown band (always a risky purchase). Also, the song's length proved prohibitive for radio airplay; only top sellers from established bands (i.e. "Stairway to Heaven", "Hey Jude") could afford to be over seven minutes long.

However, when "Layla" was re-released on the 1972 compilation The History of Eric Clapton and as a single, it charted at #7 in the UK and #10 in the U.S.. Sales of the album have crept forward, and "Layla" has since become a staple of FM radio.

In addition, critical opinion since has been overwhelmingly positive. Dave Marsh, in the The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, wrote that "there are few moments in the repertoire of recorded rock where a singer or writer has reached so deeply into himself that the effect of hearing them is akin to witnessing a murder, or a suicide... to me, 'Layla' is the greatest of them."

"Layla" is featured on a number of "greatest ever" lists:

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll
27th place on Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
16th place on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Rock and Roll

Unplugged

In 1992, Clapton was invited to play for the MTV Unplugged series. His subsequent album, Unplugged, featured a number of blues standards and his new "Tears in Heaven". It also featured an "unplugged" version of "Layla". The new version was received as more reflective than emotional; it slowed down and reworked the original riff and dispensed with the piano coda.

Quotes

"'Layla' is pure catharsis, followed by a coda written by Jim Gordon that is nothing less than bliss, the sound of love fulfilled."— Stephen Thomas ErlewineTemplate:Ref

"But with the addition of Gordon's plaintive piano movement, over which Clapton and Allman wove filigree guitar lines, it became a staggering piece of music."—- Nigel WilliamsonTemplate:Ref

Popular Culture

The piano coda of "Layla" was featured in the finale of the 1990 film Goodfellas. (Incidentally, the same film featured another of Clapton's hits, "Sunshine of Your Love".)

The song was covered on The Pinko Commies' first album, Phunkadaliciously Incredibibble

Sample

A sample of "Layla" is available here.

Notes

References

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Reviews of the album (http://www.superseventies.com/spderekdominoes.html/)
Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6596661?rnd=1116371790287&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847/)
An interview with Eric Clapton (http://www.eric-clapton.co.uk/interviewsandarticles/reptileinterview.htm)
An interview with Pattie Boyd (http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/03/pattie.boyd/)
Remembering Tom Dowd (http://www.gritz.net/features/tom_dowd.html)
Slowhand Blues Guitar on Layla (http://www.12bar.de/layla.htm#layla)

External links

"Layla" lyrics (http://www.eric-clapton.co.uk/ecla/lyrics/layla.html)